Small animated figures such as dolls or figures which are part of music boxes, clocks and the like have existed for hundreds of years. Such animation has classically been achieved through the use of mechanical gearing. In modern times, animation has been achieved through the use of electro-mechanical designs requiring extremely complex electrical circuitry and associated mechanical devices, such as expensive servo-motors and the like. More recently, with the development of amusement and theme parks, the need to animate much larger figures, such as full size human and animal replicates, has arisen.
As the size of the figure to be animated increases, the complexity of the electro-mechanical design requirements grows commensurately. In part, the one approach has been to employ pneumatics to achieve animation of such large figures. However, the resulting animation has been crude, at best, and incapable of duplicating fine motion, such as that demonstrated by a human finger. When dealing with very large figures, the devices needed to effectively animate fine, detailed motion are extremely expensive and require special electrical current, along with complicated control circuitry. Even that solution, however, cannot achieve rapid, realistic motion, as the time necessary for the figure to change from one position to another is limited by the time necessary for servo-motors to reposition themselves.
Further, to realistically animate some figures, the need also arises for the animated character to exhibit a significant degree of strength. An unfortunate drawback of the electro-mechanical means of animating figures, typically, is a lack of ability to exhibit such significant strength.
Because of the complexity of the task, only the largest of companies have been able to afford to design and build large animated figures, which still suffer from the aforementioned shortcomings. Of course, the public visiting theme parks and the like displaying such animated figures have been required to pay higher prices of admission to allow the theme park operator to recoup the high investment costs required to construct the figures used in the park in the first instance.
A need thus exists for a relatively simple means to achieve realistic animation or motion in figures, especially large figures, such as replications of horses, dragons and the like, without the use of expensive, electro-mechanical motors. A need also exists for a means of animating figures in a manner which allows the characters to perform tasks requiring a level of strength and rapidity of motion not capable of being exhibited by figures animated through electro-mechanical servo motors and the like.